Europe’s first songbird reintroduction programme is celebrating after cirl buntings, one of Britain’s rarest and most attractive small birds, were found last week to be breeding in Cornwall – where they had been extinct for many years.

The discovery of a nest with two chicks is a major landmark in efforts to restore populations of the birds to Britain’s farmland, where they have been devastated by agricultural intensification.

While species such as skylarks and lapwings have suffered huge declines, the even prettier cirl bunting was hit hardest. A close relative of the yellowhammer, with a striking yellow-and-black head pattern in the male, it was once common, but by 1989 was down to 118 pairs, all in south Devon.

However, a programme of agri-environmental agreements has enabled Devon farmers to create ideal habitats on their land, and the population has risen to more than 700 pairs.

Yet the bird’s range did not correspondingly re-expand, as they do not travel far from where they are born. So, for the first time in Europe, a reintroduction programme was conceived along the lines of the restorations that have been so successful in Britain for endangered birds of prey.